re: "In post-Qaddafi Libya, there's still a lot of work to be done"

Dov Zakheim at Shadow Government ("Notes From The Loyal Opposition") contrasted post-Qadhafi Libya with post-Saddam Iraq, based upon remarks by Amb. Paul Bremer.

Money quote(s):

"It is noteworthy, and not a little bit ironic, that Ambassador Paul Bremer, he of the late and unlamented Coalition Provisional Authority, identified several criteria for ensuring that the departure of the dictator does indeed lead to a fundamental change in the governance of Libya. He argues, in bold typeface, that "the population must believe that the political change is real and lasting;" that "someone has to provide security;" that "a new political order must be established quickly."

It is difficult to argue with Bremer's main points."

&

"He adds that "unless some system is put in to demobilize the fighters, there is sure to be trouble." But who exactly should be the "someone" who provides security? What plans have been drawn up for a "system" to demobilize the fighters? And who will implement the plan for such a system. Surely not the United States, I hope. We have enough on our plate, both domestically and internationally. The military and financially exhausted Europeans? The Arabs? The United Nations?"

CAA doesn't see that happening, everyone's distracted by what's happening in Syria and what could happen in Iran.

"(W)ho will constitute that political order and what sort of political order will it be? There is no evidence that the current Interim Government has in mind the kind of democratic, pro-Western political order that Bremer seems to be calling for. Nor is it clear that, democratic elections notwithstanding, Iraq is pursuing policies that align with America's interests -- and that is before all American troops have left his country."

10/24

re: "War Powers hypocrisy plus incompetence equals..."

Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive ("the paratrooper of love") hasn't been impressed with much of what passes for strategic thinking in recent years.

Money quote(s):

"(I)t is entirely fair to note that the plan for the post-invasion phase was mind-numbingly foolish. And yes that blame lies squarely at the feet of Donald Rumsfeld. I skipped meeting him when he was pimping his book at the recent Milblog conference and I think he has failed to properly accept the fact that his idea of a central government in a tribal and honor culture was beyond naive absent a tyrant like Saddam to crush any dissent. That plus staffing the effort with a collection of country club wankers and the dumbass cousins of big Republican donors apporoaches criminality. And yes I am calling most of the folks who ran the immediate aftermath incompetent. If you happened to be one of them and don't think that describes you, then think of the two people on either side of you when you were there. Two of the three of you ought to have stayed home to entertain Buffy and Muffy and Tad."

Two points:

The first: I never did get the feeling that "Phase IV" was ever fleshed out beyond the initial PowerPoint (TM) slide that mentioned it. It was underwear-gnomes on steroids. Hope very definitely was the plan, with a side order of wishful thinking.

The second: even the language qualified folks whom State lent to the CPA ("Can't Produce Anything") really weren't the ones who should have been sent. Great guys, generally, some of whom I count as friends, but at that point in their careers they were simply too junior, and too inexperienced, to accomplish much more than not getting killed.

A decade on, and these same officers probably, knowing now what they didn't yet know then, would have made a huge difference. Strangely, the qualified and experienced officers then were not the ones who were sent. Odd, that.

For some reason, that reminds me of a phrase I had to invent to explain a lot of what I saw during OIF 1, i.e.,: "Resourced to fail."

"(W)e have a mission.... now entering its third month without the defining characteristic of a mission.....a freaking goal. We are bombing Libyan warships, its capital and trying to "accidentally" kill the damn tyrant we don't have the stones to publicly call out. All the while Syria slaughters its citizens, Iran builds away on the Islamic bomb and O rewards the Palestinians for forming a unity government that, apparently, still thinks those pesky Jooooos could use a bath in the sea."

Many's the time in the course of my military and governmental careers that I've had to perservere onward, and as a leader persuade others to do the same, in the hope that while certain decisions might not make sense at the ground level, the people making the decisions had a lot more information available to them than was available to us, the big picture as it were. Perhaps that was hoping against hope.

"I believe that the War Powers Act is likely un-constitutional, but I believed that when Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II and even Obama were President. That is a principled stance"

So it is.

And what about Botswana?

There were one or two points I meant (but in my haste neglected) to address in my last post.

First: worldwide assignments availability.

As Mr. Brose put it:

"The thought that some military officer would move laterally into a mid-career diplomatic or civilian post in the State Department, jumping ahead of Foreign Service officers who had served their time
stamping visas in Botswana or someplace, was a non-starter for the institutional Foreign Service. And needless to say, no military officer worth a damn would retire after a decade or so in uniform to stamp visas in Botswana with 24-year-olds fresh out of their A-100 class."

When the Department was just starting the selection process to staff the new (temporary) embassy there (the CPA was still in business), the sheer numbers of planned FSO staffing, combined with one-year assignments, convinced me that Iraq and Afghanistan would, sooner rather than later, become the tails wagging State's personnel "dog."

This, more or less, has happened.

Nonetheless, State still has to staff the other 265 (more or less) diplomatic and consular posts around the world. And that includes Botswana. Worsening shortages of FSOs (due to the ongoing multi-administration legacy of hiring-below-attrition, with the Diplomatic Readiness Initiative having provided a welcome pause in that personnel implosion) have meant that some ten percent of open assignments are no longer even put on the "bid lists" of available jobs, since there's no hope of filling them all.

There's a DoD parallel to State's worldwide responsibilities. There are ongoing U.S. military commitments in over a hundred countries globally, not just the obvious ones like Iraq and Afghanistan, Germany and Japan, or even Korea, the U.K., and Italy.

So far the hard choices necessitated by shortages of diplomats (worsened by the Department's commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq), such as deciding which countries no longer "rate" a U.S. diplomatic presence, have been deferred.

But let me move away from the negative for a moment. Easing the hiring of military officers and others with relevant reconstruction experience for service outside the regular FS career paths might make sense, depending upon the new adminstration's priorities. Even providing an avenue for qualified persons to transition or convert to FSO generalist careers wouldn't be an impossibility. But given how little has actually been accomplished in establishing and staffing a cadre dedicated to stability and reconstruction, it doesn't appear to have been at the top of anyone's list of real (as opposed to theoretical) priorities.

Lastly, I seem to recall that there were shortages of Army captains, and that the promotion rate from captain to major was approaching 100 percent. This doesn't suggest to me that there are great numbers of experienced military officers that the DoD can spare, there being a war on and all, nor that those it can spare are necessarily the cream of the crop.